


The Purr Of The Engines

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Anxiety, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, ends happily, sensory issues, spoilers for episode 167
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26223283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: With nearly everyone asleep and even the familiar sound and vibrations of the engines gone, Cel finds an unexpected source of comfort.
Relationships: Celiquillithon "Cel" Sidebottom & Vengeance
Comments: 17
Kudos: 35





	The Purr Of The Engines

**Author's Note:**

> Had to get one more Cel & Vengeance fic in before the new episode. Have I mentioned I love sentient ships?

_It’s all your fault._

Cel stops shaking Azu because it’s not helping, ( _nothing’s helping they’re not helping_ ) kneeling and tucking the orc back against Kiko’s shoulder where she had been resting, and it would have been sweet under most other circumstances. Not this circumstance though, not this one because she’s not waking up. No one’s waking up. What if they never wake up? ( _What if they all never wake up because Cel built the cage wrong not enough materials not enough time it was better than nothing they had sworn it was better than nothing_ ) Cel’s heard stories about wild magic of course, seen some of the more minor, almost whimsical effects, people with blue skin or beards of butterflies or hair that’s literally become fine stands of silver or gold. They’ve heard stories of worse, of people gone boneless, or places where the earth screams ceaselessly from hundreds of mysterious holes in the ground. And yes, they’ve heard of the so-called “sleeping towns” where the residents slumber, never aging, never dying, never waking. It’s nothing Cel’s ever seen for themself, has always wondered if they were just stories or if there was some truth to it, and now here they are. Here they are and everyone’s asleep.

“What’re we going to do?” Siggif asks.

Correction. Siggif is also awake. Hopefully Zolf is awake too. What if he isn’t though? Why hadn’t Cel rigged up some sort of communication device so that whoever was steering could talk to someone down below? ( _Why hadn’t they thought of that they were supposed to be clever_ ) It would have been useful even without this circumstance, but especially now when they could try to contact Zolf and ask if he was asleep or horribly mutating or tell him that, by the way, everyone but themself and Siggif was asleep and Cel hadn’t been able to protect anyone.

“What’re we going to _do_?” Siggif asks, a little bit louder. Cel winces and closes their eyes as if that will block out the sound of Siggif’s voice or the musical ringing of the metal of the cage that Cel had built, _(had failed at building)_ will keep them from having to answer the question. Everything is suddenly _too much_ in a way Cel recognizes, but they don’t have the luxury of holing themself up in a room and working on a project alone while wearing the ear muffs they _mostly_ use when they’re working with explosives but are also handy for blocking out regular, everyday sounds. They don’t have _time_ for their brain to be doing this, but Cel also knows mentally shouting at it to stop isn’t going to help either.

“You’re not falling asleep too, are you?” Cel hears the rustle of cloth and smells the unpleasant odor of chewing tobacco and knows that Siggif is reaching out to touch them, maybe shake them, and Cel tries their best to be kind in most situations but if Siggif touches them right now, Cel is going to yell and then the both of them are going to feel bad.

“I-I was just thinking,” Cel says quickly. They pull their goggles down over their eyes, thumb flicking the little lever that changes the lenses from the magnifying ones to the smoked glass ones that dim light and mute colors. Sounds becoming too much is usually accompanied by light and colors being too much too, and Cel isn’t going to take any chances. They still don’t open their eyes though, not yet.

“Oh,” Siggif says, sounding relieved. “Looked like sleeping.”

Cel does their best to take a deep breath. It’s not easy, as if their lungs want to move as fast as their racing thoughts are, but Cel manages one breath, then another, letting them out as slowly as they are able. For a moment everything is calm and almost quiet, save for the ringing of metal and magic. That’s when Cel realizes the sound they’re _not_ hearing, the vibration in the floor they’re _not_ feeling. Cel’s eyes snap open in shock. The engines aren’t running.

Cel doesn’t realize they’ve said this out loud until Siggif’s eyes go wide and he moans, long and low.

“No, we can’t be becalmed, we just can’t!” Siggif’s voice suddenly sounds as if it’s coming from a younger man and his breath hitches as if he’s close to tears, the sounds of an old trauma resurfacing.

Cel gets to their feet, shoving their own anxiety and panic into a corner of their mind to be dealt with later, when they’re alone and can have a cry. There’s something to fix. They can fix this.

“I think we’re still moving,” Cel says, feigning confidence. “It doesn’t feel like we’re slowing down.” They reach out slowly and put a gentle hand on Siggif’s shoulder when he doesn’t flinch away. The poor man is shaking. “Let’s go look.”

Cel guides Siggif over to the lone porthole and is relieved when they see the scenery, mountains and bones and wisps of color and fog moving past them at approximately the same rate as they had been hours ago, when Cel had last glanced over. “There,” they say gently, never mind their confusion about the fact that they’re still moving at all with the engines stopped. “See?”

Siggif stares out the porthole, face nearly pressed against the glass. “Yeah,” he says finally, his voice shaking only slightly. “Yeah.”

Cel tries to smile and has no idea if their face is making an expression that anyone would call reassuring. “I have to go check on the engines,” they say. There’s no question of _not_ doing it, they’re the only one who’s awake who can. The mystery and anxiety of their situation curls in Cel’s stomach. Had the engines failed mechanically _(had they missed something?)_ and it was only the magic of the borealis holding them up? Was the wild magic simply repressing the engine’s normal function and the machinery would start working again if they left the magical field? “Keep an eye on everyone for me? Just—just yell if anything changes.”

“Yeah,” Siggif says distractedly, face only half turned away from the porthole.

It’s the best Cel can do. “I”ll be right back,” they promise, and if they pause just slightly as they step over the threshold of the room and into the corridor, well, Siggif probably won’t have noticed.

“I have suggestions,” Cel says out loud nervously as they walk down the corridor, their own footsteps sounding oddly distant. “If you’re going to change me that is. Not that I _want_ you to, exactly. I mean, I change myself all the time but that’s different, that’s me _wanting_ it _._ Wings would be nice though. Maybe fangs, but not too big, because then it’s hard to talk. Suddenly knowing all spoken languages, that would be great. Really I’m fine the way I am though, but I’d rather you do something to _me_ than anything else to my friends. Not that you can understand me probably. I’m doing the equivalent of talking to a thunderstorm, but it’s making me feel a little better, and I’ll do just about anything to feel a little better at this point.”

Cel checks on the elementals before they check on the engines. With Zolf and Hamid’s help they’ve built so many wards and alarms around the room that at least five different alarms should have gone off if the elementals had even crackled funny, more if they had actually gotten loose or just straight up vanished, but then again there should have been an alarm for total engine failure as well, and _that_ had never gone off. Had Cel botched that too ( _what else did you fail at?)_ just like the cage?

“Not helpful,” Cel mumbles. “I have things to _fix_ , ( _and whose fault is it if they’re broken?)_ so can we do this _later_ please? Or not at all, not at all would be great.”

The elementals are just fine, all present and contained, the lightning elementals crackling and the air elemental swirling the same as they had been doing. That was something anyway, something good. You could take your time fixing a broken engine up here if you had to, but if the elementals failed… well, Cel wasn’t going to do the maths right now to figure out just how long it would take the ship to crash. Too many variables.

The starboard engine room is closest, and the quiet of it when Cel opens the door is nearly a solid, tangible thing. Had it been minutes ago when Cel had longed for quiet? Quiet _should_ be better than the noises the engines _could_ be making, the low groan of gears straining to move, the high whine of metal about to snap. Instead it’s just quiet, so quiet that Cel’s own breathing seems much too loud. Even the high, chiming sound of wild magic seems distant here.

“What’s wrong?” Cel asks out loud as they cross over to an instrument panel. They’d be speaking to the engine even if it wasn’t so eerily almost silent, talking to inanimate objects is a habit of theirs so ingrained that they honestly don’t remember when it started. They raise their goggles and tap one glass covered gauge with their finger pensively, the needle inside staying firmly within the green. “This _says_ you’re receiving power just fine. Unless the gauge isn’t working?”

A green light on the panel flashes twice. Cel gives it an idle glance before tapping the gauge again. Green is a good color. Of course, no colors were _bad_ per se, colors couldn’t make the complex moral judgments that sentient beings could that would categorize them as good and bad, and really, thinking strictly in the binary sense was just—

“Focus,” Cel tells themself. “Hmmm.” They walk over to the bulk of the engine and place a hand on one of the pistons. The metal feels slightly warm to the touch, but it’s not vibrating, not straining as if it wants to move and it can’t. It’s just… stopped. They gently stroke the metal, letting themself be comforted by the feeling of the smoothness of it against their skin.

The engine purrs. Usually when people say this they mean the sound that’s produced by a perfectly working engine, every part interacting seamlessly with every other part. That’s not what’s Cel’s experiencing though, their eyes wide and their hand now still. The engine isn’t moving at all except for a vibration that sounds and feels for all the world like a cat’s purr, if a cat had a metal throat and wire for vocal chords.

Cel stares at the piston. After a moment it moves ever so slightly under their hand, nearly _exactly_ like an animal trying to solicit more petting. Cel moves their hand away in the interest of experimentation and the piston _whines_ , a sad, pathetic sound of metal under stress.

“I-I’m sorry.” Cel’s throat is suddenly dry. They swallow as they put their hand back on the piston and begin petting it again. The purring starts up immediately.

“You’re—alive?” Cel knows theoretically that inanimate objects can animate under the influence of wild magic, but they hadn’t thought very hard about if that meant they’d have a personality as well.

Out of the corner of their eye, Cel sees a green light on the instrument panel flash once. There’s no reason it should be flashing at all. Except… it had flashed the last time Cel had asked a yes or no question, hadn’t it? When Cel had asked if it was possible the gauge wasn’t working it had flashed twice.

“Are you flashing once for yes and twice for no?”

The light flashes once.

“That could be coincidence,” Cel says even as the piston vibrates with purring.

The light flashes twice.

“No, it’s not coincidence?”

_Flash._

“You’re alive?” Cel circles back around to the most important question, heart pounding with excitement.

_Flash._

“Really alive? All of you? The whole ship?”

_Flash._

Cel surprises themself by bursting into overwhelmed tears. They’re happy tears for the most part, because this is literally the most amazing thing Cel’s experienced in their whole life, but it also feels like all the emotions they’ve been pushing aside are spilling out of their eyes as well, anxiety and frustration and doubt. They lean against the engine, arms wrapped around it as far as they can reach and just let it happen. Through it all the engine purrs deeply, as if trying to comfort the only way it can.

“Sorry,” Cel manages to say once they’ve cried themself out. They scrub at their eyes with their sleeve and then at the damp bits of engine. “Sorry, I’m really happy! I am! This is just a lot. I mean, it’s probably a lot for you too, having never been alive before.”

_Flash._

“Oh I have so many _questions_!” Cel tries to focus on what’s most important at the moment. “Are your engines working? I mean,” Cel shakes their head. _“_ Are your engines not running because you don’t need them to fly?”

_Flash._

“Okay. Okay. That makes sense, why waste the energy if you don’t have to. They _could_ run though if we needed them to?”

_Flash._

Cel breathes out a sigh of relief. If the ship being able to fly solely through magic is only a temporary benefit, they’ll have the actual engines to fall back on. Though as will magic effects go, Cel wouldn’t mind if this one lasted. Not like—

Cel gets to their feet. Now that they’ve had a cry they’re thinking a little more clearly. “I have to tell Zolf what’s happened to everyone. Well, nearly everyone. And you! I have to tell him about you!”

The floor under Cel’s feet vibrates like a purr, like the engines are running again, and Cel laughs.

“Love you too,” they say, and feel a wave of surprise and affection when the green light on the control panel flashes once.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think Cel wires up a speaker to the ship so it can properly talk, after reassuring Zolf and Hamid that this isn't a "Mr. Ceiling" situation. There's not even *one* brain in a tank!
> 
> Also totally not projecting any sensory issues I have onto Cel. No. Of course not.
> 
> I’m [angel-ascending](http://angel-ascending.tumblr.com) over on Tumblr and [angel_in_ink](http://twitter.com/angel_in_ink) over on Twitter if y’all want to stop by and say hi!


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